of divine service, on the Sunday next before the eve of St. Michael's day, hence called Crack-nut Sunday,' was suppressed in the same town; while foot-ball is still played in its streets from twelve till four o'clock on Shrove Tuesday, in memory of a traditional victory over the Danes, when the head of their leader was the substitute for the football of the present day. 'The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,' in Chertsey, from Michaelmas to Lady day,' and Black Cherry Fair,' held there on the 6th of August, is the relic of an ancient privilege granted by Henry the Third to the Abbot of Chertsey. The Boy Bishop,' was in the olden time regularly installed on St. Nicholas'-day in the parish church of Lambeth. The annals of Guildford are full of curious old customs. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, officers were annually chosen by the corporation, under a penalty of 208. in case they declined to serve, to superintend the baiting of the bull,' an amusement first promoted by William de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, and which was an entertainment always expected by the populace on the election of a new town councillor. There also took place a yearly choice of a Sommer king, prince, and sword-bearer,' which was not without a parallel in the county itself, in the mock election, on each dissolution of parliament, of a Mayor of Garrett,' a small hamlet near Wandsworth, which originally consisted only of an old mansionhouse of the Brodricks. Its indecency occasioned its cessation at the end of the last century, but not before its memory had been perpetuated by Foote's comedy of The Mayor of Garrett.' The whole account of these proceedings at Guildford contrasts curiously with an order of the reign of Edward the Sixth, appointing persons to take down the name of every barber who should shave or trim any man on the Sabbath in service time,' and containing regulations for preventing butchers, clothiers, or millers from following their occupations on Sundays within the borough. The cucking-stool at Mill-mead was held in such wholesome terror, so late as 1710, that one person left the town through fear, she having long been a reputed scold.' Walton boasts the possession of a 'Gossip's Bridle,' which may be seen in the vestry, and consists of an iron frame made to fasten at the back of the neck with a padlock, and keeping down the tongue by the pressure of a flat piece of iron. It was presented upwards of two hundred years ago to the parish, with the following inscription :'Chester presents Walton with a bridle,

To curb women's tongues who talk too idle.'

1 The curfew bell has now, the newspapers tell us, July 1859, been sent to be recast!

The cause of this singular present, tradition ascribes to the loss of a considerable estate, through the idle gossip of some fair lady. We believe the instrument of punishment to be unique, whatever may be the case with the crime.

The county of Surrey is one of the smallest in England. Its form is that of an oblong, in length about 25 miles, while its greatest breadth from east to west nowhere exceeds 40 miles. From west to east, dividing the county into two equal parts, stretch for many a long mile the North Downs, a part of that great branch of the central chalk mass of Salisbury Plain, which, diverging where it enters the county at Farnham, extends through the whole of Surrey and Kent, terminating between Folkstone and Dover, and is broken in its course through Surrey only by the valleys of the Wey and Mole. Covered with a short verdant turf, and intersected by numerous depressions and channels, they present a bold escarpment to the south. area gradually diminishes as they approach the western borders of the county, varying from eight or ten miles in the east, until it is contracted into the narrow and beautiful ridge called the Hog's Back, which, stretching for eight miles between Guildford and Farnham, is barely half a mile across. Godstone, Reigate, Dorking, and Farnham all lie south of the range. Guildford stands upon the chalk, the river Wey flowing by it in its course from the wild wastes around Hindhead where it rises, through a chalk valley, until it falls into the Thames at Weybridge. It still fully justifies here Pope's epithet of

'The chalky Wey, that rolls a milky wave.'

Their

At the foot of the Downs, the chalk district is separated by a narrow belt of clay, known by the local name of malm,' from the wide tract of the shanklin,' or lower green sand, which rises into a chain of rills parallel to the North Downs, and forms the highest ground in the south-east of England. The bold and mountainous ridge of Leith Hill, and the more distant crest of Hindhead, considerably overtop the North Downs, attaining an elevation of near 1,000 feet, and the range ends in the series of conical hills near Frensham, known as the Devil's Jumps.

The peculiar conformation of the county affords a greater variety of points of view than that of any other in the kingdom. North of the Downs, prospects of great richness are commanded from the well-known heights of Richmond Hill; from St. Anne's Hill, near Chertsey; Cooper's Hill, overlooking Runnimede and Windsor Forest; and St. George's Hill, near Weybridge; as well as from the high land around Norwood which is now crowned by the Crystal Palace. Box Hill, Norbury Park, and many points

along the range of the North Downs, overlook the lovely Dorking valley. Newland's Corner, on the Merrow downs above Guildford, presents a view striking from the contrast of the rich cultivation of the Wey valley in the foreground, with the bleak barrenness of the wastes which form the horizon. Hindhead, the central crest of the Surrey moors, commands a wild expanse of ferns, heath, and furze. This ridge is the watershed of the district, the streams which rise there flowing in different directions. One of the sources of the Wey springs forth immediately under its crest, in the curious sand hollow called The Devil's Punch-bowl,' round which, protected by an embankment, the present Portsmouth road winds. The declivity is so steep, as to have rendered an alteration necessary in the course of the old road, which was carried along the extreme edge of the hollow.

6

But of all the points of view in the county, Leith Hill claims, alike by its elevation and its central position, the preeminence. Rising gradually, by an almost imperceptible ascent of nearly six miles from the Dorking valley, through heathery lanes and fir plantations, the traveller emerges upon an undulating common. At the end of this stands the tower which marks the highest point, upon reaching which, a precipitous steep bursts unexpectedly upon the sight. Spread out like a map before his feet, over an area of about two hundred miles in circumference, lie twelve fair counties.' The weald of Surrey forms the foreground of the picture, while far away in the blue distance rise, crest over crest, the surging hills of Surrey,' which recall the undulations of the Roman Campagna, as seen veiled in purple haze from the heights of Monte Cavi, but clothed with a wild luxuriance of woodland, and verdant pastures, to which Italy can present no parallel. Nestling at the foot lies Leith Hill Place, embosomed in the Surrey lanes, and many another park-girt mansion, such as England alone can boast. To the north, over the heights of the Downs, the smoke cloud hangs heavy upon the metropolis, broken only to the right by the roofs of the Sydenham Palace glittering in the sun. The Downs themselves shut out from the view the northern half of the county. Beyond the county itself, to use the words of the Handbook, From one point, the high grounds about Nettlebed in Oxfordshire are sometimes visible, and the sea opens southward, through Shoreham gap; westward, the sand-hills, bordering the chalk, lift themselves fold beyond fold towards the Hog's Back, like so many bastions stretching forward into the oak-covered wealden below, the ancient haunt of the iguanodon and plesiosaurus.'

There is a curious letter extant written by Evelyn to Aubrey,

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in which he speaks of this view as embracing, besides the whole vale or wild of Sussex, part of eleven other shires; so as for the extent or circumference of vista, I take it to be much beyond the keepe at Windsor, or any that I have ever observed either in England or elsewhere.' The Devil's Jumps' figure in this epistle as certain sugar-loaf mountains, south-west of Wotton, which with the boscage upon them, and little torrents between, make such a solitude as I have never seen any place more horridly agreeable and romantick.'

The geological structure of the county is nowhere better seen than from this point. The wealden formation, common to Surrey, Kent, and Sussex, covers all the southern part of Surrey, underlying both the chalk and the shanklin sands. It is now generally admitted, that the displacement of the chalk from the Weald valley (perhaps the widest in the world) was caused by the gradual elevation of the forest ridge. Ages of tranquillity, when the valley formed the bed of a vast river, which flowed through a country in the enjoyment of a tropical climate, were succeeded by those periods of turbulence and destruction, in which the foundations of the great deep were broken up, and the whole earth ultimately converted into islands and continents. As it is, the two ranges of the North and South Downs, now present, where they front the weald, the appearance of ancient sea cliffs, the bases of which were no doubt once washed by the waves of some mighty estuary. The whole of Surrey, north of the Downs, constitutes a part of what is termed the London basin,' and is covered by tertiary formations of Bagshot sand, London, and plastic clays abounding in organic remains, in which the wealden formation is also particularly rich. The shanklin sand is all but destitute of them, although a few specimens have been discovered at Godalming and Nutfield.

It was not until a much later period that there arose upon the upheaved bed of the ocean, the Coitandred' or mighty wood of the Britons, to which the Saxons gave the name of 'Weald' or Forest Chace. Traces yet remain of it in the scattered clumps of ash and oak, which attain a noble growth all over the weald. The latter flourishes so luxuriantly, as to have become the staple of the soil, and to have obtained the name of the Weed of Surrey.' Its longevity is attested by two remarkable specimens: the King's Oak' at Tilford, mentioned by that name in the charter granted by Henry de Blois to the monks of Waverley, A.D. 1150; and, the Crouch Oak,' at Addlestone, under which Wicliffe preached, and Queen Elizabeth dined, and which marks the ancient boundary of Windsor Forest. The Vicar's Oak,' which stood, in Aubrey's time, at the junction of the four

VOL. II. No. III.

I

parishes of Battersea, Camberwell, Streatham, and Croydon, is now no more; and with the famous old oaks of Norwood, have departed the gipsies, who made that place their head-quarters, and had the honour of receiving there, among others of the quality, Mrs. Pepys, as we learn from her husband's diary. Indeed the county has always been famous for its wood. The yew is spread over the North Downs, and some magnificent specimens in Norbury Park and at Merrow must be almost contemporaries of the King's Oak.' The Surrey walnuts have been celebrated since the days of Aubrey, who enumerates, as the staple products of the county, walnuts, fuller's earth, box, and corn.' The prices in the London market are mainly regulated by the Croydon walnut fair, held early in October, at which 4,000,000 walnuts, principally from Beddington and its neighbourhood, are frequently sold. The box has given a name to Box Hill; and large plantations of Scotch fir and larch flourish over the whole face of the county, especially on the old estates of the Duke of Norfolk near Dorking; at Netley, an ancient appanage of the Hampshire abbey of that name; and upon the Bagshot heaths. Norbury Park, the Deepdene, Ham House, Pains Hill, Farnham Castle, and Peper Harow, afford splendid specimens of the cedar. One at the latter place, mentioned by Loudon to have been planted in 1735, was brought, when two feet high, from London, by a former Lady Clarendon. It is now fifteen feet in girth at three feet from the ground, while it spreads into branches, the horizontal extent of which is 100 feet. The clump of old chestnuts at Burgate are worthy compeers of the Peper Harow cedars. The wheats of Surrey have always been celebrated. The Chudham, or white wheat, which has twice obtained the medal of the Royal Agricultural Society, is perhaps the best in quality produced in England. Considerably upwards of fifty thousand acres in the county are continually under wheat, and the prices in the Guildford market rule on an average higher than those in any other town in the country. Sir Richard Weston, of Sutton Place, the father of Surrey farming, has the credit of having introduced, in the reign of Charles I., a regular system of irrigation, and also of obtaining from Flanders the seeds of the first clover grass grown in the county. The present system of green crops owed its origin to him, turnips and saintfoin, both of which are now extensively cultivated, having first been grown upon his estate.

The Wey and Mole, as well as the Thames, in the neighbourhood of Runnimede, are used for the production of water meadows, and good crops of hay are thus obtained off comparatively worthless land. The Surrey pastures have, however,